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There are two types of employee: people and human resources. It’s easy to tell which one you are. If your boss says, “Todd, please have your team reach a final decision,” you’re a person. If she says, “Todd, please organize a team meeting, and because it’s lunch-time remember you should supply food, and please cut the breads or sandwiches into either halves or quarters, to discourage over-eating, and remember that crumbs and spills attract uninvited guests,” you’re a human resource. And you work for the New York City Department of Health.

The difference between people and human resources is that people have brains. People don’t need a company policy on how to ascend stairs (stay left, hold the handrail at all times, look straight ahead: GE). People can figure that out for themselves. Human resources, on the other hand, are dumb as a box of hammers. They need everything spelled out. Human resources are basically office equipment with legs. They’re talking furniture. In fact, they’re worse than furniture, because at least furniture stays where you put it. It doesn’t have body odor, or forward chain e-mails, or stop by to tell you about their sick cat.

The Department of Health has taken a lot of heat over the last ten days for its “Life in the Cubicle Village” memo, a set of excruciatingly detailed guidelines for employees moving into its new offices in Long Island City this month. Some found it insulting to receive instructions on how to, for example, tell a co-worker they’re busy (“I’m in the middle of something. May I drop by or call you later [give a specific time]?”). Or to be told to avoid eavesdropping on cubicle neighbors (“If that fails, at least resist the urge to add your comments.”). Some thought the specifications on acceptable light snacks during meetings (“drinks cannot contain more than 25 calories per 8 ounces”) to be a little heavy on the micromanagement.

But these rules are totally necessary. Have you ever worked in an office? Then you know what I’m talking about. Some of these human resources are animals. If there weren’t company guidelines on how to navigate the revolving front door (wait for people inside to fully exit before stepping in: ExxonMobil), they’d never get past the lobby. They don’t actually follow the guidelines, of course. There are emails about the guidelines, they’re mentioned in the all-staff meetings, they’re on the cork board beside the coffee machine, but somehow still these people remain oblivious. Some do it on purpose. They deliberately flout the guidelines. You know that guy? Yeah. That guy. When he leaves half an inch of gritty black goo in the bottom of the percolator, he knows what he’s doing. He knows you’re going to stop by with exactly ninety seconds before being locked in a two-hour meeting on synergizing coalistics and all you want in the world is a quick caffeine hit. He enjoys your frustration. It’s what he lives for. It’s why he comes in every day. It sure isn’t to do any work. The man is useless. You will never understand why management can’t see that.

But I digress. The point is: human resources need rules. You don’t. You’re a person. To you, such minutia is not merely unnecessary, and not only an insult: it’s a challenge. Someone says you must cut bagels into halves or quarters, you know what you’re going to do? Frickin’ thirds. That’s right. Enjoy your bagel thirds, people. Because oppression foments rebellion. That’s what King George III didn’t realize. You can’t treat people like idiots. Not people people.

You’ll notice that managers are people. This is why the guidelines never apply to top brass. Sure, they’ll pretend to abide by them, to set a good example. But that’s for show. You don’t pay a CEO five million bucks a year to follow a set of instructions that could be performed by a well-trained monkey. CEOs should be using their initiative. Getting creative. Shedding outdated thinking. Pioneering new markets. You can’t do that by following the book.

But for the rest of us: guidelines. It’s because we’re living on top of each other. In the old days, when men were men and men had offices, it didn’t matter whether someone wore strong cologne. It would bother you for about eight seconds, as they passed by. With offices, loud personal conversations happened behind closed doors. We didn’t need guidelines on what constituted an acceptable ring-tone. Well. There were no ring-tones, obviously. But if there had been, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because of offices. Offices with doors.

Now it’s all open plan. It’s rolling cubicle farms. You know what we’re becoming? Singapore. It’s illegal to chew bubble gum in Singapore because everybody lives within earshot of five million other people. You can’t have that kind of population density without totalitarian social rules. That’s what these workplace guidelines are: blueprints for a new, cramped society.

I got out. I couldn’t take it any more. Now I work from home. My smells are my business. No-one leaves the coffee pot technically-not-empty but me. It’s not all upside. I miss the steady paycheck. I miss being able to go to the bathroom and think, ‘I’m getting paid for this.’ But I don’t miss the guidelines. I do like being a person.

This piece was published by CNN.com on April 15, 2011 and used to
exist here.
Then they reorganized their website and it vanished. I can’t even find it
by search any more. So I’m rehosting it.

When I was 23 and struggling to get anyone to notice I’d written a novel,
it annoyed the crap out of me to see so-called “Young Writer” prizes won
by 35-year-old guys with no hair. In which parallel universe, I wanted to know,
could those tottering old farts be considered young?

Which is why I’m so happy to be named among the Sydney Morning Herald’s
Best
Young Australian Novelists (for Company). Somewhere
out there, a curly-haired 23-year-old is muttering about the unfairness
of it all. Suck it up, punk.

Until recently I was a complete unknown in my home country of Australia,
while enjoying in the US a level of fame I would characterize as
slightly less completely unknown. This gripping irony unfolded
last year when I switched local publishers to Scribe, a feisty upstart
with the crazy idea of getting me to do some publicity.

So it was that I ended doing a lot of interviews in which I talked
about how I did no interviews in Australia, and wasn’t
that weird, what with me being slightly less completely unknown
in the US and all. Scribe is planning to re-publish Syrup
in a few months, and now my publicist is frantic because
with that angle exhausted, there’s nothing interesting left about me.

I am now so slightly less completely unknown, in fact, that the
State Library of Victoria—that’s my home state—even
noticed I had a book published.
This is exciting not just because it’s a great way to encourage
people to read my book in a way that generates no sales. They’re
also running a competition inviting you to
vote for your favorite book.

I wasn’t sure it was ethical to ask my readership, the vast majority
of whom reside outside Victoria, to vote for me in what seems intended
as a purely local poll. But I asked Scribe, and they said, “Hell, yes. See
if they can vote multiple times, too.” So I guess it’s okay.

In other local news, I’m doing a reading from Company at
Brighton
Library on Thursday 31st January 2008 at 6:30pm. I’m also reading
my short story A
Shade Less Perfect at
the launch of
The
Sleepers Almanac on Wednesday 6th February 2008 at 6pm in the
Bella Union Bar at Trades Hall, cnr Victoria and Lygon St, Carlton. Aloud,
I mean. I’m not just sitting there, quietly turning the pages. I’m a professional.

I read this book and promptly gave it to some of my work colleagues—I’m sure you hear this all the time. I wanted to buy a case to keep under my desk to hand out to people who came in my office.

Now my manager and some others have read it and they want me to come to their book club to lead a discussion! If you have any ideas to lead me into this land of discussing this with upper management who just happen to be members of this book club please let me know. I need to keep my job!

Hmm. Tough one. Perhaps, “What I got out of this book was a deep, abiding relief that
our company is nothing like this. That’s why I hand it out to people at work; everyone
enjoys stories that have nothing to do with their own lives. It’s pure escapism!”

One of the interesting things about corporate workplaces is that they turn
otherwise decent human beings into… well, management. They’re not like that because
they’re petty, deceitful scumbags. I mean, obviously that helps. But it’s the environment
that encourages those personality traits. This could be a cry for help from your boss,
who in a flash of self-discovery has thought, “My God, what have I become?”
Your job at this book club, then, is clearly to reassure him/her that it’s only the
other managers who are like that, and gather information that will be politically useful
at your next performance evaluation.

One thing I’m looking forward to is discovering what wacky new
security schemes US Customs has come up with since I last visited. In
2006 they’d added fingerprinting and
digital mug shots. This time I’m thinking maybe they’ll swab
my mouth or get me to sing the Pledge of Allegiance. Or maybe they
have followed this route to its logical conclusion and now herd foreign
visitors straight from the airport to prisons, where any of us not
intending to commit terrorist atrocities can
fill out applications to be released.

Wow, that was pretty cynical, even for me. I’m not sure if that
struck the appropriately witty, feel-good note I want to
promote a book tour. But anyway. I have dates! And here they are:

As usual, I expect any outrage over ill-considered dates, places, etc,
to be directed at my publisher. Remember, they’re the ones organizing
this stuff. I’m just turning up and cleaning out the mini-bars.

The paperback
is out March 13, and I tour two weeks later. The early word is
that I’m headed
to Los Angeles, Denver, Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Austin,
Phoenix, and San Francisco. So the result of that polite
discussion seems to be that Phoenix beat out Dallas,
Milwaukee supplanted Boston, and LA and Madison combined to
defeat Ann Arbor. I’m not saying that necessarily reflects on
the inherent worth of those places. But you could certainly
read it that way.

The dates and places should be confirmed shortly, and
I’ll post ‘em here.

Also in the US & Canada, an audio version of Syrup
has been released. I wonder if that’s some kind of record,
a publisher coming out with an audio version nearly eight years
after the book. No, probably not. In fact it wouldn’t even
be close. I don’t know why I brought that up.

Australia & New Zealand

I’ve spent most of the last year moaning about my publishing
troubles in Australia. Because it really grates on me
that in my home country I am near-completely unknown, while
in the US I am near-completely unknown, but not quite so
much. This has nothing to do with wanting recognition for
my artistic achievements, you understand. It’s about impressing
chicks. But now I have a publisher,
Scribe,
and they’ve been crazy busy organizing publicity ahead of the March 5th
publication.
Seriously, you want your publisher to be enthusiastic, but
this is almost beyond that. Just today, they’ve sent me…
let me check… eleven emails. I have conversations with
them that go like this:

Scribe: “Wow. Company. It’s such a great book.”
Me: “Thanks.”
Scribe: “I mean, seriously. I own ten copies. Not for
publicity purposes. For myself.”
Me: “Oh, that’s… keen.”
Scribe: “Sometimes at night, I take off all my clothes and
rub myself with the pages.”

The Dutch Company paperback is out in March, and the publisher has produced
this incredibly slick
Zephyr Holdings website. It’s got desktop wallpapers
and email-your-friends cartoons and everything. I have no idea
what they’re about, because they’re in Dutch. But I bet they’re
frickin’ hilarious.

Unfortunately I suspect that this means Company needs to sell about a million copies
or Uniboek will collapse under the weight of its outlandish web
design expenditure. But fingers crossed.

They also seem to be re-publishing Jennifer Government
under the title Logoland, and
synchronizing the cover with
Company’s. I love synchronized covers. They make me feel
collectible.